Announcement of U.S. Transhumanist Party Collaboration with the Zero State (ZS) and Participation in the ZS Alternate Reality Game

The U.S. Transhumanist Party is pleased to announce its incipient collaboration with a Social Futurist community based in the United Kingdom – the Zero State (ZS) – described as “an organization formed in 2011 to work toward the establishment of a pro-technology, Transhumanist, distributed, virtual State. ZS’ motto is ‘Positive Social Change Through Technology’.” As one of the Zero State’s co-founders, Dirk Bruere, explains, the primary meaning of the name “Zero State” is “the lowest energy state of a system, the place to which everything returns when the energy runs out.”

Given that the U.S. Transhumanist Party strongly supports such pro-technology initiatives as advocated by the Zero State, as well as distributed systems for participation in political processes, throughout its Platform (particularly Article III, Sections V, VI, VIII, IX, XIII) and also supports various forms of political, economic, and cultural experimentation in Article III, Section XXII, our collaboration with the Zero State is a logical fit for implementing our own vision for as many polities throughout the world which open themselves to ambitious experiments in paradigm-shifting technologies.

The most recent incarnation of the Zero State is that of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), whose premise is described on this page. The game is pursued by twelve Houses, described as follows:

The Zero State is organised into twelve Houses, and each of those Houses began with twelve Founding Members.

The first five of those are the Core members, each of whom leads their own crew of “subsid” (subsidiary/affiliated) members. The five Core members of each House together comprise a kind of meta-team, known as the House’s Core Team. That Core Team is tasked with establishing their House in the years 12017-12018, by recruiting, developing the House’s internal culture and traditions, and working on projects known as Missions.

Dr. M. Amon Twyman (Ámon Ásentir), who co-founded the Zero State, has kindly designated the use of one of the twelve Zero State Houses – House Rhadamanth – for activities that would further the goals of the U.S. Transhumanist Party. The announcement of this development is available here and reads as follows:

House Rhadamanth is now seeking both additional Core Members and Subsidiary Members to populate it. The purpose of this arrangement will be to engage transhumanists, futurists, and life-extensionists to pursue, in a “gamified” manner, the projects that will advance the objectives of the U.S. Transhumanist Party in the real world, all the while strengthening the network of connections and beneficial interactions among future-oriented thinkers throughout the world. If you are interested in joining, please e-mail Gennady Stolyarov II here. We are interested in 10 other individuals who would be able to devote a reasonable amount of time to actively advancing ongoing projects such as the following:

(1) The U.S. Transhumanist Party infographic project, which it is hoped will result in detailed visual representations that would, in essence, serve as a map of the terrain of transhumanist and life-extensionist organizations, social-media pages, and key individuals.

(2) Participation in distributed computing projects (for instance, Folding@home) aimed at fundamental research that could help accelerate the arrival of cures to various diseases. The U.S. Transhumanist Party previously announced this activism project here.

(3) Campaigns for writing and advocacy on particular issues – for instance, rejuvenation biotechnology research, rights of patients of rare diseases to pursue experimental treatments, or the official recognition of biological aging as a disease.

We welcome ideas for any other projects that could be pursued in this “gamified” format as well. Much of the Alternate Reality Game remains to be developed, but the early participants will have the opportunity to shape many of its parameters and contents. The U.S. Transhumanist Party sees promise in this additional way to strengthen ties within the international transhumanist movement and explore opportunities for collaborative endeavors among transhumanists and futurists of various persuasions and backgrounds.

Gennady Stolyarov II is the Chairman of the United States Transhumanist Party. Read more about Mr. Stolyarov here.